I remember her name, although I will not share it. She spent one year teaching. I doubt she ever taught again. My last post finished by saying, “the fine line between letting them laugh with you and letting them make fun of you must not be crossed.” My recent posts have carried a fairly upbeat flavor, assuming success and offering bits of advice. This post will be headed in a less cheery direction.

That little woman taught math on the first floor of my middle school during the year when the Principal and Assistant Principal were replaced in February. We had eighteen fire alarms that year, not including scheduled drills and one or two alarms used to cover bomb threats. Chaos reigned in parts of the school, especially after all electives, science and social studies were replaced with ISAT (Illinois State Achievement Test) preparation classes at the start of the second semester. Fights were common. I’m ashamed to say I mostly ducked and hid in my classroom, teaching and managing student issues. I kept my sweater and attendance book ready for the next false alarm.

Down on the floor below me, though, a woman with the best of intentions was drowning. Every day she prepared and presented math lessons. In the meantime, calculators were flying out her windows, books were thrown on the floor, and paper wads caromed around the room. Students even put gum in this teacher’s hair when her back was turned. Rumor had it the gum wads happened three times, but I could only confirm two incidents. I watched this class a couple of times. Years later, I remain awed by this woman’s work ethic. I’d have been out of that building by mid-year. She stuck out the full year. I can only assume she wanted to continue teaching. Teachers who leave a contract unfinished can seldom find another job.

What went wrong? ISAT prep certainly created problems, as all the fun classes were replaced with more math and English. A Principal who hardly ever stood in the halls did not help. That Principal was one of the brightest men I’ve worked under, but I am not sure he believed in mentoring. You could do the job or your couldn’t in his view. Lack of structure dogged all of us that year. A computer problem resulted in student schedules being messed up — and then sometimes changed — for months. I’m not going to do a post mortem examination of that school year. That post might turn into a longer book than Moby Dick.

Eduhonesty: I gave that teacher a piece of advice I want to share with my newbies: Don’t turn your back to the crowd. Make sure your audiovisuals are ready to project up front. Then face your students.

I’ll confess I have often turned my back to the class. I have worked at computers where I had a poor sightline into the classroom. Once you know your classes, you will know how much flexibility you have. I have mostly trusted my students and my students have mostly proved trustworthy. In the year of many fire alarms, though, I experienced a class that was only slightly more fun and controlled than your average flu epidemic. In large part, I blame ISAT prep. My first semester science fiction elective has to have been one of my favorite classes of all time. I loved those kids and the stories they wrote. Unfortunately, my second semester science fiction elective was almost immediately converted into a math class. Science became math. Social studies became English. Electives became either math or English. If students were unlucky, they might have five math classes, a daunting schedule for those who dislike or struggle with math, and mine was the last class of the day. The anger and resentment seemed palpable in that room some days, and the little Greek woman whose own elective class had been converted to a math class no doubt had similar problems.

ISAT prep academically trashed the end of that school year, engendering a rebellion that simmered into late spring. The new administration helped somewhat. Making students stand freezing in the snow for a half-hour after one fire alarm helped. Setting up more consistent, firmer consequences helped. But if you want an example of No Child Left Behind proving disastrous for the very children that the program had been intended to rescue, I think the year of the little Greek woman may be a perfect example. The pursuit of higher test scores turned into its own version of the Boston Tea Party, with students indiscriminately tossing math classes into the harbor.

Could that new teacher have rescued herself? I will never be sure. In a school suffering pervasive “widespread disorder in classrooms,” an actual category in government statistics by the U.S. Department of Education (See http://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/crimeindicators2012/tables/table_07_1.asp for a look at this.), I don’t know that any new teacher could have held the reins on a large class at the end of a math-math-math-math-math day. I was lucky enough to have smaller classes due to my bilingual position and lucky enough to be able to default to English when the math became overwhelming, but that woman was a regular math teacher. She was stuck.

I do know this. She should never have turned her back on the kids after that first paper wad. She should have called or even visited home after the gum. The first set of administrators were providing little disciplinary back-up to anyone — they were overwhelmed — but she should never have tolerated that disrespect. I am going to assume that almost no new teachers reading this post, probably none, will walk into such a mess. But many new teachers start in the toughest schools because those are the schools that have frequent vacancies.

If you took a school in an urban, academic disaster zone, this post is for you. Your students need you to be positive, to appreciate and enjoy them. Please don’t be angry or negative if you find they are more of a handful than you expected. Should you need to curtail privileges and pass out worksheets or classwork rather than doing fun activities, do what you have to do, but verbalize the reasons. Say, “When I can trust you to listen and not throw paper wads, we will finish project presentations,” providing an incentive to improve behavior. Try to reward good behavior regularly. I suggest issuing candy coupons. I guarantee the money spent on candy and a Costco membership will be worth every penny. See my August 17th and June 6th posts on music, an even better incentive than candy.

But when the going gets rough, keep your eyes on your class. Perfect that sideways stance, the one that lets you point at the board while watching kids at their desks. If you observe misbehavior, especially deliberately disrespectful behavior, call home immediately. Put some desks off to the side or up front and move misbehaving students up beside you and/or away from their peers. Never ignore a paper wad or rude remark. That proverbial ounce of prevention might have saved the sweet woman who drowned. (And might not have. I’ve never seen a mess like that, before or after that year.)